Several Senior Ministry Presentations will be given at the Disciples Divinity House this spring. The culminating project for all MDiv students at the University of Chicago Divinity School is the ministry thesis and its presentation. This year, many of the graduating students are also part of the DDH community, either Disciples scholars or Ecumenical residents, and the DDH Common Room will host their presentation. Here is the schedule:

Monday, April 16: Colton Lott, "A Theological Exploration of the So-Called Dying Church." 7:00 pm at DDH

Monday, April 23: Virginia White, "Be Thou My Vision?: Moral Perception in a Neoliberal World." 7:00 pm at DDH

Tuesday, May 1: Josh Menke, "The Eschaton Nearby: Contestations of Space and Time at Standing Rock." 7:00 pm at DDH

Monday, May 7: Jonathan Cahill, “Can Two Walk Together? The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada and the Community of Disciples of Christ in Congo.” 7:00 pm at DDH

Monday May 14:  Hannah Fitch, “Posture and Praxis: A Role for an Evolving Church.” 7:00 pm at DDH

Tuesday, May 15: Luke Allgeyer, “You Are a Pilgrim and This Is a Pilgrimage," 7:00 pm, Swift 106

Friday, May 25: Nadan Cho, “As the Spirit Leads: Reimagining and Experiencing the Holy Spirit in the Modern Particularity.” 6:00 pm at DDH

Mark G. Toulouse will give the Divinity School's 2018 Alumnus of the Year lecture in Swift Hall on Thursday, April 19, 2018, at 4:30pm. He was selected for the honor upon recommendation from the Divinity School’s Alumni Council to the Board of Trustees of the Baptist Theological Union. 

From 2009 until his retirement in 2017, Mark Toulouse served Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto as Principal and as Professor of the History of Christianity. Under his leadership, Emmanuel introduced several new academic programs, including the PhD degree, the MA degree, and the Certificate of Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy, all offered conjointly with the University of Toronto. His work has included the creation of Muslim and Buddhist Studies programs. Prior to his appointment at Emmanuel, he spent twenty-three years at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas, eleven of which were spent as Dean and then as Executive Vice-President of the school. He began his work in theological education in 1984, when he joined the faculty of Phillips Theological Seminary, then in Enid, Oklahoma.

Mr. Toulouse received his PhD in the History of Christianity from the University of Chicago in 1984. He has written or edited ten books, including Joined in Discipleship: The Shaping of Contemporary Disciples Identity (1992 and 1997); Makers of Christian Theology in America (1997), Sources of Christian Theology in America (1999), Walter Scott: A Nineteenth-Century Evangelical (1999), God in Public (2006), and most recently co-authored The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture (2016). His research and teaching have been supported by grants from the Association of Theological Schools, the Lilly Endowment, the Louisville Institute, the Wabash Centre for Teaching and Learning, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Connaught Fund at the University of Toronto. An ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Mr. Toulouse regularly conducts workshops for ministers and lay people on topics pertaining to North American Christianity, Disciples history and theology, religion and public life, and theological education. 

Spring quarter begins March 26. The first forum of the quarter features Angie Heo, Assistant Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion at the Divinity School, on April 3. Several Senior Ministry presentations have been scheduled also as part of our Monday programs: those of House Scholars Jonathan Cahill, Hannah Fitch, Colton Lott, and Virginia White. Dates and details are available in the calendar of events.

"Guests are welcome for these celebrations of learning and leadership," says Associate Dean Yvonne Gilmore. "The entrance to the Disciples Divinity House has a wide landing and wide doors. Ring the bell and you may be greeted by any number of individuals. Cross the threshold and enter into shared conversation, shared meals, and shared learning."

Illness has often been a site for moral and theological inquiry--in medieval times and in our own. For a while now, House Scholar Mark Lambert has been thinking theologically about stigmatizing illness, and writing about it while drawing on medieval thought and contemporary medical ethics. His efforts have culminated in a dissertation proposal which has just been accepted and is entitled, "The Sacramental Sickness: The Perceptual Interplay between the Eucharist and the Vestigial Leper-Christ in Medieval Theology."

Mr. Lambert explains, "Leprosy as an illness serves as a site for moral and theological inquiry; it frames and manifests moral and theological questions about the nature of bodies, vulnerability, and social responsibility in light of bodily frailty. But most importantly, the evocative and ambiguous visage of leprosy renders this illness a potent, symbolic lens for exploring questions of perception, exemplified in the vestigial leper-Christ: veiled divinity embodied in visceral materiality."

He will focus principally on "medieval theologians’ creative employment of a network of theological symbols—the leper/leprosy, the Eucharist, and Christology—to grapple with the ambiguities and anxieties of corporality." He explains, "The guiding thread of this project is the assertion that medieval leprosy was interpreted as masking a deeper, hidden reality. For a medical hermeneutic, leprosy was the shockingly visual manifestation of an internal disorder or imbalance. For a theological hermeneutic, leprosy could serve as either the visual betrayal of a hidden sin or the grotesque veil of the divine. But both hermeneutics reveal a preoccupation with perception and appearances: a preoccupation shared with medieval discussions of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Consequently, this dissertation will focus on the medieval concern with perceiving the divine in the material: primarily embodied, on the one hand, in the hagiographical topos of a leper disappearing to reveal a veiled Christ, and on the other, eucharistic miracles wherein Christ is literally-bodily perceived in the Host (as a finger, baby, etc.). These twin topoi are combined in Franciscan theology."

The conclusion shifts to the 19th century and an "iconoclastic ministry" in the leprosy settlement on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. "Father Damien and Mother Marianne serve as constructive models for imaginatively and sensitively reconfiguring theological symbols so as to address the relational disruption wrought by stigmatizing illness."

House Scholar Jack Veatch was selected as a sponsored participant of the Festival of Young Preachers 2018, held in Atlanta on January 3-5. The Fund for Theological Education enabled him to participate along with a preaching mentor. He selected Associate Dean Yvonne Gilmore as his mentor. Watch and listen to him preach here. Former resident Braxton Shelley, now a professor at Harvard, was among the workshop leaders. Jack Veatch is pictured here with Divinity School alumnus Ernest A. Brooks, who has been installed as the new president of the Academy of Preachers. 

We give gratitute to Lee Hull Moses, who has served as a member of the Board of Trustees since 2007, and, for the past three years, as its president. We are grateful for her vision and creativity, and for what her leadership has meant for DDH and its students. She is the Senior Minister of the First Christian Church of Greensboro, North Carolina, where she also served as mentor to DDH alumnae Thandiwe Dale-Ferguson and Judith Guy who completed full-time internships in Greensboro.

On January 1, the gavel passes to April J. Lewton, alumna and Vice President of Development and Marketing at the National Benevolent Association (NBA). A trustee since 2010, she has served as the chair of the Development Committee for the past two years. Her wider church leadership includes service as the former Moderator of the North American Pacific Asian Disciples (NAPAD).

Dorothy Coffman Messenger died on November 5 in Edmond, Oklahoma. She was 102. She was born March 4, 1915, in Dallas, Texas, to John Richard Coffman and Rhe Harper Coffman. She attended Texas Christian University, where she met G.L. “Andy” Messenger. They were married August 27, 1936, and both graduated from TCU in 1937. She earned the Bachelor of Science Degree in Business.

After college, they moved to Chicago, where G.L. entered the University of Chicago as a Disciples Divinity House Scholar. She was employed at the International Council of Religious Education, which later merged with the Federal Council of Churches to become the National Council of Churches. Her responsibilities included meeting arrangements for scholars working on the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Their first full-time pastorate was at Canyon, Texas, where they began serving in the fall of 1939 and where their daughter, Myrna (Ranney), was born. There followed two more Texas pastorates, at Center and at Denton, and the birth of their two sons, MacDiarmid and Scribner. They served the Glen Oak Christian Church in Peoria, Illinois, and then in Oklahoma at First Christian in Stillwater, Disciples Christian Church in Bartlesville, and First Christian, Woodward. In Oklahoma, Dorothy was employed for 28 years in the field of accounting.

Dorothy Messenger was active in all phases of church life. She was moderator of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Oklahoma, 1982-84, president of the Oklahoma Christian Women's Fellowship, and an elder. She taught church school classes with all ages, led retreats and numerous workshops, and spoke in churches across Oklahoma. She volunteered in many interdenominational projects. She was beloved as a teacher, adviser, and mentor. She was predeceased by her husband, to whom she had been married for almost 67 years. In 2005, she created the G.L. “Andy” and Dorothy Coffman Messenger Fund at the Disciples Divinity House. She is survived by her daughter and two sons, and by numerous grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. A memorial service was held November 16 at Southern Hills Christian Church in Edmond.

Katherine A. Dey, friend of Disciples House Scholars and benefactor, died October 5, in Arlington, Virginia, due to pneumonia complications. She was 96. In a quiet, determined way, she established two named scholarships at the Disciples Divinity House, the M. Elizabeth Dey Scholarship and the Drum and Tenant Scholarship. The first scholarship remembered her beloved grandmother, "Mom." Ms. Dey saw the opportunity to remember her in a way that reflected "her life, her concern for others, her religious convictions and insight into human nature, and what she meant to me." The second scholarship fulfilled her friend Florence Drum's desire to honor her own mother, Eleanor Tenant. All four women--Katherine and Elizabeth Dey, Flo Drum and Eleanor Tenant--were "doers" associated with the Wilson Boulevard Christian Church in Arlington. DDH alumnus Ray Schultz was the pastor of the church during a formative period. Katherine Dey sought to pass this heritage of strength and action to next generations of ministers and church leaders.

Born March 21, 1921, Katherine and her sister Frances were reared on Wilson Blvd. by their paternal grandparents, M. Elizabeth and Edward S. Dey. After 1939 graduation from Washington-Lee High School, she worked as a typist in the Arlington Circuit Court Clerk's office until 1942 when she moved to Jacksonville, Florida, to work on National Defense projects. For over two and a half years, she worked as a Class A Welder at the St. John's River Shipbuilding Company, where 61 Liberty Ships were built and launched. When the contract completed, she went to work as an Aircraft Mechanic for a year at the Jacksonville Naval Air Base, repairing war-damaged fighter aircraft wings and replacing glass windows. In 1948, Katherine began her 32-year service with the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, retiring in 1980.

She was a lifetime member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In 1974 she was the first female church board chair and one of the first two female elders elected in the Capital Area of the Christian Church. In 1983, she became a volunteer driver in the Community Volunteer Services Division of the Arlington Chapter, American Red Cross; three years later, she became volunteer Transportation Coordinator, continuing for over 10 years. In recognition of her exemplary volunteer service, Katherine was awarded the first Chapter Board Chairman's "Inspiration Award" in 1994. In 2010, she was recognized for 27 years of voluntary service to the Arlington Red Cross Chapter. She had served a total of 23,375 volunteer hours. She is survived by loving cousins and devoted friends who cherish her legacy of humor, generosity, and faith. Her sister, Frances predeceased her. Memorial contributions can be made to the Disciples Divinity House or to the First Christian Church of Falls Church, Virginia.

Welcome new Disciples Scholars (L to R): Luke Soderstrom (MA), Victoria Wick (MDiv), and Rachel Abdoler (PhD). Luke Soderstrom is MDiv graduate of Western Theological Seminary who serves part-time as an assistant to HELM President Chris Dorsey. He was just joining a Disciples congregation in Michigan when he began his MA studies last year; this year he is a new Disciples House Scholar. He is interested in pursuing PhD work in theology. Victoria Wick, a member of the Christian Temple in Baltimore, is a 2015 graduate of St. John’s College in Annapolis who had been working full-time in student services there. Her background, vocational discernment, and the appeal of an atmosphere of ideas, conversation, and engagement propelled her toward DDH and the Divinity School. Rachel Abdoler, who completed her MDiv as a Disciples House Scholar and with a commitment to interfaith engagement, enters the PhD program in the History of Christianity to pursue a fascinating project on medieval Christian communities in majority Muslim contexts whose little-translated texts were written in Arabic.

DDH welcomes the return of two MDiv Scholars after a year away on full-time internships: Devon Crawford, who interned with the national office of the NAACP in Baltimore as it responded to these consequential times, and Virginia White, who furthered her understanding of nonprofit organizations and theological reflection while working with Week of Compassion, the Disciples disaster relief and humanitarian assistance program fund, and with the Oakland Peace Center. DDH also welcomes six additional new residents who are beginning MA and MDiv studies at the Divinity School, and the return of former resident Uk Ryel, who is pursuing his PhD at CTS.

During the past two years, The Enhancing Life Project has explored the aspiration of human beings to live better. Given the profound expansion of human power through technology as well as advances in genetics, ecology, and other fields, the vulnerability and endangerment as well as the enhancement of life are dominant themes in the global age. Kris Culp is one of the 35 Enhancing Life Scholars from around the world who will present research results at the Capstone Conference at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center. Andrew Packman and Darryl Dale-Ferguson are among the students giving "night talks" as part of the conference on Friday, August 4.